V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

In the aftermath of a nuclear fallout that destroys Africa and most of Europe, a fascist government comes to power in the United Kingdom. This government systematically destroys all vestiges of culture, music and art, and sends the blacks, Asians, gays, and marginalised to the gas chambers.

In one of the resettlement camps, poisonous drugs are given to the prisoners in an experiment. Most die; but not the man in Room V. This man becomes the man behind the painted smile.

V for Vendetta is a critique of society and a vision of what it should be like. There is a moving letter written on toilet paper by a gay woman whom we never meet that describes human dignity and freedom as that "inch" deep inside her that no one can ever take away. Anarchy is reconsidered in light of freedom; murder, in light of a new ordering of society.